All Top Ten WordPress themes are premium now

If you´re a regular visitor of this site, you already know about our Top WordPress Themes reports. They are automatically generated based only on statistics, using data obtained from all the site analysis performed by our WordPress Theme Detector tool.

Our Top Themes report is therefore an unbiased way of ranking WordPress themes based on their popularity, since it shows the themes that have been more frequently discovered by our theme detection tools, after millions of searches started by tons of thousands of users from all over the world.

Given their statistical quality, I personally like to check our “top” reports every once in a while in order to get a picture of how the WordPress ecosystem is going, and to try to learn about tendencies regarding popularity of themes and plugins. Well, I have to admit that I am in a privileged position since you only have access to the top reports for the present day, while I can always dig into our database, gather historical data and compare things from different moments.

No free themes appear among the top ten anymore

A couple of days ago I realized there was something new on the Top Themes report: the most popular free WordPress theme was no longer among the top ten. In other words, all Top 10 themes are premium themes at this moment.

There used to be always at least one free theme among the top ten. Just a year ago, for instance, Twenty Twelve was #8 instead of #11 as it shows nows, no longer being part of the top ten WordPress themes.

I´ve checked our records and collected historical data in order to picture the evolution of free themes among the top ten themes during the last 5 years, comparing the current situation with data for mid-December from 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013. Their evolution is presented in the following table:

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

#1

#2

#3

Twenty Twelve

#4

Twenty Eleven

Twenty Twelve

#5

#6

Twenty Ten

Twenty Twelve

#7

#8

Twenty Eleven

Twenty Twelve

#9

#10

Four years ago, in mid-December 2013, we had 3 free WordPress themes among the top ten. Twenty Twelve was near the very top, occupying the third place, and it was closely followed by Twenty Eleven as #4 and Twenty Ten on the sixth position. Then the following year we only had 2 free themes on the top ten, and by the end of 2015 only one free theme remained there. And then, after a couple of years where premium themes have been gaining ground against free themes, by the end of 2017 we finally find that all of the top ten themes are premium now.

By the way, another conclusion to be noted is that, beginning with Twenty Thirteen, free default WordPress themes have never been as successful as their predecessors, as none of them made it to the top ten list. Twenty Fourteen is now on the 20th position, while Twenty Thirteen is #23.

Apart form Twenty Twelve, Twenty Thirteen and Twenty Fourteen, there is only one more free theme left among the current top 25: Hueman, in the 21st position. This theme, however, has a Pro version now, so I guess it should be considered more as a freemium theme from now on. In any case, we would be talking about just 4 free themes among the current top 25 themes, which means that 21 of them, i.e. the vast majority of the top 25 list, are premium themes.

The current Top Ten WordPress Themes

The current situation for the Top Ten WordPress Themes, as of mid-December, 2017, is as shown on the list below.

Top Ten WordPress Themes as of mid-December, 2017

Click on screenshots or links to get more info about the themes and their providers

7 themes out of the top ten are sold through Themeforest

Another thing that caught my attention is that 7 out of the 10 top WordPress themes are from theme authors or providers who sell through the Themeforest marketplace.

As a matter of fact, apart from the almighty Genesis theme (that has always been on the top position), the very successful Divi theme that occupies the second place, and the OptimizePress theme especialized in online marketers that closes this top ten list, the rest of these themes, all #3 through #9 in a row, are themes sold through Themeforest. The first of them is the popular Avada theme, that has been on the third position for a couple of years now.

Digging further in our database, I found these interesting facts that can illustrate the evolution:

A year ago there were 6 Themeforest themes among the top ten, instead of 7 (Betheme being the new one this year, with a fast ascend by the way).

Two years ago only half of the top ten themes were available through Themeforest, one less than a year later (X by Themeco was the one that hadn´t made it yet to the top ten by mid-December 2015).

As for 2014 and 2013, the mid-December 2015 records show that there were just 3 Themeforest themes among the top ten during those years. Very popular themes like Newspaper, Enfold or Salient hadn´t climbed that far yet before 2014, although they were on their way.

Furthermore, if we search in the current top 25 list instead of in the top 10 list, we would realize that 15 out of the 21 premium themes found among the top 25 are themes available through Themeforest. That means more than 70% of the top premium themes, which follows the same situation found in the top ten (7 out of 10).

Conclusions

It clearly looks like WordPress users find that a premium theme is a valuable asset for their websites, as the most popular themes are all premium these days.

During the last few years, the WordPress ecosystem has been evolving towards a preference for premium themes over free themes.

Another noticeable tendency is the important share of the top premium theme market being held by Themeforest (around 70% at the moment). Over the years, the number of top premium themes available from authors that sell through that marketplace has been continuously increasing.

At any rate, given their typical prices, a good premium theme seems to be a good investment for any comercial website.

What do you think about the evolution of the premium theme market? Let us know through the comments.

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As someone who uses the Genesis framework for my own website and for several clients, I feel more comfortable knowing that they constantly update their work, they’re extendable, secure, and easy to update. Not to mention the child themes give you a lot of options to build off of.

So I’m not surprised that more and more people are deciding to go down this path. It makes sense – especially for people who have little to zero experience with coding.

Its really true.The trends are also visible in our users too.
The main reasons are delay in page load or page speed . Premium really makes an edge.
Most probably Free are not updated & hence the associated threats.
So Premium in word press is good choice for serious business.

Good point, Janine, you said it very well, I also have the same doubts about why some popular themes rank so low on google page speed. In my experience, i changed my site to a one of this popular themes mentioned above and I experienced a big boost in search engine rankings, but I would like my page to be faster.

@Emilio, are you saying you see a boost after moving from your previous theme to one of the popular theme? I know many factors could have caused your site to get some search engine love, but changing of themes? Well.

You have a good point there Janine. The X Theme has been too buggy for my liking.

Yes Hueman has proversion now, But the pro one got few more features only. But for simple bloggers like me, Hueman free version will suffice. Thanks to Hueman makers, cause it’s the best theme for me ever.

And out of this fancy list, Newspaper is the best theme ever created for WordPress. Thanks for sharing the useful & informative post, thumbs up!

Now that we have page builders, all I care about in a theme is flexibility of the header and footer and compatibility with top plugins–including Jetpack which seems to be incompatible with many new themes. Is this preference showing up in the trends? I’d love to see an article on it.

I tried Avada but quickly found it to be sooo slow and bloated and the support was rubbish. Eventually switched to the Genesis framework after a recommendation and spent a few months learning how to drive it so to speak, but in line with the recommendations. it was well worth the effort. I learned a lot (still learning) but we use it now on all our customer sites, which are very fast and look amazing.
I would never go back to a short-code laden theme like Avada or anything similar

Not only is Avada rubbish with poor support, as is the case with too many envato (themeforest, whatever they call themselves) marketplace products, but they want you to pay them almost $3,000.00 USD to be able to use it your client’s site (extended license). The reasonably priced regular license ($60) is only to be used on a personally-owned sites or sites that you do not charge the end user for. LOL. What a joke, for sure.

I started using Divi and I really like it. Had a membership for a year just to use the optin plugin, but decided I would try it. Good speed and function. One of the other things I like is the update system. With other themes I use Visual Composer and it is rare that the theme developers keep it up to date and is always a guessing game when they will update it.

I’ve noticed a VERY good many plugins are freemium, too. It’s apparent these developers & designers are tired of the whole “free for everyone” model. Free doesn’t pay the bills or put bread on the table and freebie seekers are usually more demanding than paying customers.

In the end, paid-for themes and plugins are the best way to go for end-users because you have no basis to bitch if a theme or plugin is never updated and breaks your site – it’s free! But if you pay for it, this allows the developer to keep things moving and up to date (assuming they charge enough for it). And the developer has the incentive to support it and keep it running properly or he loses his income.

As long as people have to pay for food and bills and other resources in order to survive, the free for all model never lasts long. Freemium is the only way to go if you want to offer something free (assuming you know how to work the freemium model to be profitable).

Oh, BTW: I’m new to WPTD and I was wondering: what does it mean when you look up a site on WPTD and it says the name of the theme is “DEFAULT”? As far as I know, there is no such theme and if you install wordpress with the actual default them, which is twenty-eighteen, it shows “Twenty-Eighteen” so I have no clue what “DEFAULT” really means.

Can you suggest which theme is best for pictorial quotes website. I mean my site is popular-quotes.com and I want it just like easy to use as I am a quote designer also a seller on fiverr but I need an expert to give me right direction.

Sir , i must say you really shared great list about blog. Thank you so much for useful information. Keep updating informative articles. But Mythemeshop is missing on the list. It was wonderful SEO optimized fast loading themes.

Thanks for sharing this information with us.
Would you like to suggest me any platform with free templates? I’m using free templates but now need to know experts opinion about this site and its templates.
Kindly share your feedback so I can decide what to do next?
Thanks.

Since you’ve mentioned top 10 premier/paid for themes – what about listing top 10 free themes and see what everyone has to say.
Also Looking for:-
Quick loading
Mobile friendly
Free
Affiliate friendly – including Amazon
Simplistic
Newbie Tolerant

Amazing post and definitely it is a great website with the detector. I tried a lot of themes ready and finally i found a best and free theme for my website. I got colormag theme. You could visit my website to see the simplycity of this theme and stability as well. Colormag is the only theme until now which has very less issues or maybe no issues. Worth giving a try. Sometimes free themes offer a lot better than premium themes. My website is, novicecamp.com.

I used colormag theme and a child theme of it that i created. All the best.